


Out on the Edge of Town...

by psychosomatic86



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: F/M, Larry Leroy's backstory, Mentions of Cecil - Freeform, Mentions of Khoshekh's Kittens, The Erikas are evil in this, This went to a really dark place, episode 61, oops sorry for activating you just now, spoilers for BRINY DEPTHS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 04:05:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3367118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychosomatic86/pseuds/psychosomatic86
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wishes he cared.<br/>He wishes so goddamn much that he cared, because maybe then, he wouldn’t be so alone.<br/>Maybe then, she would have stayed.<br/>Maybe then, he would have his family, his wife, his son.<br/>Maybe then, he would care.<br/>But he doesn’t because he can’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out on the Edge of Town...

**Author's Note:**

> I received a BRINY DEPTHS anon about two weeks ago on Tumblr, and I decided, "Hey, let's write a drabble in reply!"
> 
> Long story short, (although not really at all, it's more like "short story long"), I cannot write drabbles. At all. 
> 
> So here you go, 4,100 words in which I destroy the life of a character of whom we know almost nothing about.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> (Also sorry for activating you back there. Whoops.)

The air is hot this day. Hotter than usual, not that he really cares, though it does provoke enough speculation to bring a hand to his brow every few moments to wipe away beading sweat.

He grumbles as he shuffles through the gritty sand, but not audibly or coherently. There is no one out on the edge of town to listen to him anyway. Sometimes he doesn’t even listen to himself. He remembers beings who used to listen to him. They would also tell him things. Some of them were nice things, most of them were not, and he got scared. He shivers, despite the humidity, and reminds himself of things that are not tall and leafy, whispering and gentle and malevolent. He thinks of cable TV. That helps, so he runs through the latest episodes of Parks and Rec to keep himself distracted.

But, in truth, he doesn’t really care.

In the distance he can see his house, a ramshackle old thing, but it does him well… out on the edge of town.

His feet kick up miniature dust devils, but he doesn’t watch them swirl and die a few feet away. There’s something more important he should be paying attention to, he just can’t figure out what. Mostly, his inability to recall what it is has to do with the fact that he completely and utterly _doesn’t care_ , but that is beside the point.

I wonder how Larry Leroy is. He says aloud, but he is, of course, not speaking of himself. He is not really speaking to anyone, either.

That kitten’s gettin’ bigger an’ bigger since I last saw ‘im.

He likes Larry Leroy, and Larry Leroy likes him. It’s nice to have someone when his life has been so devoid of… anything.

I should go see ‘im soon. I should go see Larry Leroy. He decides, announcing it to a person who, quite frankly, doesn’t care.

He wishes he cared.

He wishes so goddamn much that he cared, because maybe then, he wouldn’t be so alone.

Maybe then, she would have stayed.

Maybe then, he would have his family, his wife, his son.

Maybe then, he would care.

But he doesn’t because he can’t.

Somewhere deep down, however, where he knows They can’t find it, he does care, just a little. That is why he stays here, out on the edge of town, in his ramshackle house, and his farm that died long, long ago.

Because, somewhere in his haze of forced indifference, he cares.

Because he thinks that maybe, just maybe, she’ll come back.

_“You know that she will not.”_ A genderless voice tells him.

It sends shuddering waves of nausea and poisonous loathing through his body, but he does not acknowledge the speaker, simply swats his hand as if batting at a pesky insect, and continues trudging home.

There is something he should be doing now, and he won’t let this monstrosity keep him from it.

_“It is futile.”_ Another equally genderless voice offers.

He doesn’t listen, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care about… _Them_.

Since the first time he had laid eyes on the Hellish beings, he knew he would have to feign ignorance. But They knew his plans, They knew how to break him, but it hasn’t worked.

Not yet, at least.

And then he thinks of how long it’s been since he last cared, since he last felt any emotion, any happiness, joy, sadness…

_What was that, 40? 50 years ago?_

_How old am I anyway?_

The cloud of winged beings now hovering around tell him exactly how old he is.

He tries his best not to listen.

For countless decades, he’s tried not to listen to anything They have to say, and the only telltale sign that he has acknowledged Them is the flood of tears that burst from his sunbaked eyes. He still does not yield to this minor hindrance and continues on until he is ducking into the shade of his porch, then through the old screen door, the dusty foyer, and, finally, the living room.

If he had any means by which to comprehend the room further than its name, he would laugh at how ironic a moniker it truly is.

_Living room._

_Living._

_This isn’t living._

_This is life in death._

This is what he would like to think, if he could think, but he is a victim of his own paradox. He cannot speculate without consciousness, and if he had that in the first place, he wouldn’t need to speculate at all.

The air around him is grey, dank, entombing, and he gropes through thick curtains of nothing to what used to be his favorite armchair. Now, it is just a chair, and not even that at all. It is just a thing. So much has become _just a thing_ in his exilic hole of a life.

As he sits, waiting for absolutely nothing yet still plagued by an overwhelming sense of _I should be doing something_ , he grumbles in strident whispers to keep the wingbeats of a thousand devils from his ears and mind.

That is his only purpose now, to keep them at bay. To keep them from sucking his very soul into whatever sinister plans they have dictated his future to fulfill. He came to this conclusion so long ago, and often times, he questions whether or not it is worth it at all, to live a life devoid of its very meaning, or to succumb to the influences of Them.

_“Yes. Yes. Yes.”_

The words are broken yet vivid in his long since deafened ears, and he stiffens, stubbed fingernails biting into the calvous fabric of his once favorite armchair. Everything around him is sharp and clear, and this is not good. This is not good at all.

He forces himself to stop thinking, but that is, of course, impossible. There is no way for him to halt the flow of thoughts that threaten to leak from the crevices veining his psyche, and the more he tries not to think, the wider the cracks become, the more turbulent the wells of his mind churn and spill and slosh their deepest nerve impulses.

It’s not working, and he can feel breath on his neck, smelling sweet at first and then putrid and rotten, decaying flesh and wounded tears, the smell of a battlefield on a scorching day.

_“Yes. Yes. Yes. Come to us.”_

_No! No! No! I can’t! Not after all I’ve suffered through! Not after all I have given up! No!_

He squeezes shut eyes that still leak tears, and hums a continuous note. It is low and melancholy, and he lets his pulsating thoughts meander out with the vibrations of his vocal chords. It travels into choked air and grappling fingers that can’t quite touch him. The sound fills the room, fills his mind, fills his body, until he is nothing but a single piece of music; an intangible and impermanent creation of a human’s desperation, a graceless kiss on the ears of an observer, an audience, a… _a listener_.

His eyes snap open, and the static radio on the decrepit windowsill bursts to life.  

Whether or not he chooses to consider it grace or damnation, the haze of indifference returns to him, and the sticky voices retreat to eldritch throats, the laciniate fingertips retract, the buzz of nothingness consumes him once more, and he feels safe, or, at least, some degree of safe.

He is never truly safe.

He lets out a shaking sigh and settles into what used to be his favorite armchair, hands quivering on the sagging armrests, head leaning back into deflated cushions…

The town’s radio host is saying something that he both can and cannot understand, and the nagging sensation that he should be doing something begins itching at the back of his brain once again. But what that is, he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care. He cannot care. To care is to relinquish his life to the entities that surround him, waiting for the moment he will stumble, for the moment that his mental walls will crumble and topple just as they had almost done, not seconds ago.

Instead, he unfocuses every atom of his being and lets the incomprehensible words from the radio wash over him.

Ages ago, when he did care, he would drink up every word that smooth toned man said. He would hold onto every inflection, every rise and fall of his cadence, every comma, period, and ellipsis. But They have even taken that joy from him, and he can make no sense of the sentences that flow through his brain.

_Goddamn, how he wishes he could care._

*

He is not sure how long he sits in what used to be his favorite armchair _(Maybe seconds or hours, who knows? Time’s not real, anyway)_ , but he is broken from his indifferent trance when he feels an agitation in the air around him. The tears have stopped, and he opens his eyes, not that he really sees much anyway. He can still, however, make out and understand that it is just bordering on gloaming and that the radio show will be ending soon, but not as it usually does or should. There is something different tonight, something sinister.

The man on the radio sounds exasperated as he says something.

Ow!

He falls from what used to be his favorite armchair as a violent convulsion takes his body. He hears whispering and a grinding of teeth, fingernails picking at skin, fingernails picking at themselves, rustled feathers and snapping joints. He hears Their anger, but he does not understand it.

And then he hears the words. He hears the words, and he understands. He hears the words, and he is free.

He hears the words, and he is trapped.

**_B R I N Y   D E P T H S_ **

For the next several minutes, pain is all he knows. Not so much the pain of the electricity coursing through every nerve in his body, but the pain of finally acknowledging all that was wasted because he could not care.

_His son swaddled in a blanket in his wife’s arms._

I wanted to hold him.

_The late nights spent watching his wife console the baby’s tears._

I wanted to help you. I wanted to hold him.

_The late nights watching his wife console her own tears._

I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to help you. I wanted to hold him.

_The late nights listening to her pleas for him to show some semblance emotion._

I wanted to listen. I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to help you. I wanted to hold him.

_That late night watching her pack the suitcase and the baby._

I wanted to stop you. I wanted to listen. I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to help you. I wanted to hold him.

_The late night watching red tail lights obscured by dust clouds from peeling tires._

I wanted to go with you. I wanted to stop you. I wanted to listen. I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to help you. I wanted to hold him.

_The late nights ignoring genderless voices._

I want to kill them. I wanted to go with you. I wanted to stop you. I wanted to listen. I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to help you. I wanted to hold him.

_The late life, spent ignoring, indifferent, uncaring yet wanting so badly to care._

_I wanted to care._

_I wanted to kill them._

_I wanted to go with you._

_I wanted to stop you._

_I wanted to listen._

_I wanted to kiss you._

_I wanted to help you._

_I wanted to hold him..._

His chest jumps as though he has been thrown to the ground, and he pulls in ragged, hitched breaths.

He wants to scream.

He wants to tear the air from his lungs and rip his vocal chords to shreds for all of the emotion that threatens to rent his heart in two. It is too much for him to take, there are too many things he wants to do now that he has it all back. He wants to laugh and cry, smile and grimace, sleep and run, embrace and destroy…

But he does none of this, because he cannot.

He does none of this because, for the first time in decades, he can see Them clearly.

He can see Their thousands of paling eyes, Their grossly distorted limbs and grimacing mouths full of shark decaying teeth. Their harpey-ed features. Their ravaged wings, molting rotten feathers that turn to sticky ash where they land.

For the first time in decades, he listens to Them, hears Their voices for what They truly are, an entangled and broken symphony of the guttural squelching of entrails and soft bones being ground against rock. He listens to Their sinister plans and diabolical scheming.

And for the first time in _decades_ , They do not notice him.

_“What happened?”_ One asks.

_“It was The Voice.”_ Another replies. _“They set off some sort of massive Awakening.”_

There is a furious rustling sound, and he can see in his periphery that a particularly large one is exhibiting signs of terrified anger.

_“No, no!”_ The one who mentioned The Voice quickly corrects. _“Not that Awakening, not as far as I can tell at least.”_

_“It was the whole town.”_ Another offers in Their sticky voice.

_“How do you know?”_ The particularly large one demands.

_“Josie told me.”_ They explain, tapping Their rotting head that sprouts sickly grey hair.

_“And what’s happening now?”_

_“Hold on, I’ll check.”_

There is an earsplitting crack as the being vanishes and returns in the blink of an eye.

_“Some of them are coming to, it looks like The Voice manifested into a weaker body than They thought, but They’re among the first. Here, listen.”_ They turn up the last few seconds of the weather, and he can’t help but think that they are the sweetest notes to ever grace his ears. It is the first music he has heard in decades, and it is heart wrenchingly beautiful.

Unfortunately, his coherence brings about more realization than he can handle as The Voice tells him what has just happened to not only the entire town, but to himself, as well.

The angels still pay him no mind, seemingly as enrapt with what The Voice is saying as he is.

_"Whoo!"_ The Voice says. _"I’ll tell you! That was quite a scene…"_

_"I will tell you, right now."_

He almost laughs, having forgotten how redundant Cecil can be sometimes.

_"It seems that “ **BRINY DEPTHS** "was, in fact, a code word - (wish they had warned me about that) - for an undercover agent in the field…_

_Unfortunately, it seems that it was the code world for every secret agent in the field, the signal for all of them to do every nefarious action that they had been planted years ago to perform._

_All over town, people we thought of as friends and family revealed themselves to be carefully planted agents._

_Adam Bayer, weekday shift manager at the Ralph’s, grabbed a discount soup display and carried it to an unmarked van that had been sitting in the parking lot as long as anyone could remember, and then drove wildly away."_

Larry remembers Adam. He remembers going out for drinks with him at his bachelor party. He remembers that they were friends before-

The Voice continues.

_"Hundreds of bushes and trees leapt into action, revealing themselves to be suit-and-sunglass wearing agents in disguise, using clever costumes that fooled all of us for years — such as holding a hand-written sign that says 'I am a tree.'"_

_Larry Leroy,_

His eyes widen at the sound of his name.

_out on the edge of town,_

_Is that how they refer to me now?_

lit his refrigerator on fire,

_Wait, what?_

_but he said that wasn’t because of any secret agent stuff,_

_What?_

_he just wanted to do that._

_What?!_

_Someone had suggested it-_

A rotting hand whips out almost immediately and knocks the radio to the floor, smashing it into several pieces, cutting off the rest of the broadcast. But he has already heard, and only a matter of it registering it is keeping the initial shock at bay.

At first, his mind buzzes, it buzzes with the fog that it so desperately wants to encompass itself in once more. His vision is blurred again, though not from tears or indifference, but from something else, entirely. His entire body convulses as though possessed by an inhuman entity that wants to tear his very being into oblivion. His mouth chatters and gapes and his mind buzzes and buzzes and buzzes.

And then he screams.

It does not start in a rising crescendo, but instead goes full force into a raging howl, a roaring bellow of seething hatred and determined lunacy. His lungs fill and empty of their own accord, and on and on until he has not even come close to emptying himself of his fury. He staggers to his feet, swaying, screaming, and the beings around him shrink back. Even the one that is particularly large cowers beside Their fellow devils.

He turns to Them, seeing Them full on, and his feet crash atop the termite stricken floorboards as he stumbles toward Them.

The particularly large one, blinded by fatal overconfidence, sees this as an opportunity.

_“Come with us.”_ They murmur in a sweet voice, cautiously approaching him. _“You have been chosen to-”_

But They are cut short as he suddenly rips up one of the smashed floorboards and rams it into Their body with the force of a bull. There is no blood, no crushing bones, no tearing skin, but he has never felt so satisfied as to watch such an evil creature collapse to the floor in a writhing mass of strangled noises and flailing darkness. He lifts the splintered wood and slams it down onto Their head. Something black and sinister oozes between the board and Their skull. It steams with putridity and revulsion, interspersed with sickly, grey chunks of what he has neither the capability nor desire to fathom.

Again, he lifts.

Again, it is brought down.

Over and over he repeats this until Their head is a soup of pulpy grey matter and bone shards.

He is not satisfied.

_“Wait!”_ The other ones plead as he turns on Them.

**_I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR DECADES!_ ** He howls. **_I WILL NOT WAIT ANYMORE!_**

He raises the plank as though to impale Their midriffs, but They insist further.

_“Just listen, please! You have been lost in yourself for so long, and so much has happened. Would you really kill those who can tell you all that you do not know?”_

He hesitates, but it is only for a second until he realizes the trickery in Their tones. He chuckles; low and evil.

**_I already know what I’ve lost, there is nothing you could possibly give back to me that would ever replace it._ **

He doesn’t wait for a reply, and Their rotting bodies are soon reduced to a viscous mass of skin and bone and hair and feathers on his termite stricken floor.

He tosses the board to the side and turns away from the bodies that are decomposing at a sickeningly fast rate. He turns away from his once favorite armchair. From broken and termite stricken floorboards and from the pieces of the static radio underneath the decrepit windowsill. He walks out through the dusty foyer, then the old screen door, and finally, the shade of his porch that is no longer shaded, but melding with the rest of the darkening world. A cool breeze lilts and tumbles around him, oblivious and indifferent to his sufferings. The Void above is a deepening navy with parallel stripes of indigo, plum, burgundy, and rich mauve in fading succession. Incomprehensible pinpricks of light, likes diamond studs, glitter and whisper in their designated stories of warriors, lovers, traitors and magnificent beasts.

He looks up at them and weeps. He reaches up hands that shake and grasp at empty nothingness. But the nothingness fills him and seals the holes that have eaten away at him for countless decades. It burns, but he doesn’t mind. After all the time of not feeling anything at all, pain is a pleasure and one he does not want to relinquish.

He sinks to his knees and feels the gritty sand between his stubbed fingertips. It trickles cool and aqueous, pittering in gentle sounds back to its home upon the earth. The wind blows a few grains further along, but they return nonetheless.

The wind brings something with it, too. A smell. A smell of smoke, and fire.

He stands again and looks for the source through bleary eyes, through tears that he and he alone has decided. In the distance, he can make out an orange glow, and he walks toward it, arms slack but moving in opposite movements with the corresponding legs to keep a steady balance. It’s been so long since he moved his arms like this, and, suddenly, he breaks out into a run.

At full speed, lungs and muscles burning from disuse, mouth gasping and sweat flying in the dropping desert temperature, he runs. The fire grows closer and closer with each bounding step, and he skids to an uncanny stop, forgetting the proper etiquette of the most basic movements due to not having performed them in so long.

He sees the source of the fire.

It is an old refrigerator, decades old, a hollowed and blackened shell now fulfilling the exact opposite of its original purpose. It smells of stale gasoline, and only a few weak flames lick and snap into the air.

_I did this._

He sits down only to stand back up.

He circles it once, twice, and gives it a sharp kick that sends up a shower of ash and sparks. They look alien against the black Void.

They look like something, too.

_Like red tail lights._

He kicks it again and again, imagining that the gleeds are her returning to him in the old Chevrolet they bought together, imagining her running from the car before she even puts it in park, and he is there too.

_He would be older now._

_Much older._

_Decades older._

_And she would be dead._

_They are probably both dead, actually._

He kicks it again and imagines the tail lights.

*

The fire is dying out, and the Void is closing in. Still he remains, watching with unblinking eyes until the last flame hisses out with a puff of acrid smoke. It swirls into the sky as one piece until the air decides its particles no longer deserve each other and scatters them away. He gives it one last kick, but there are no more tail lights. There are no tail lights and she will not return.

_But They will return._

He sits now, lies later, sleeps eventually.

When he awakes, it is still dark, but he knows in that odd sense that you just _do_ that morning is fast approaching. He hopes he will be able to see the sunrise.

He knows these hopes are pointless, not because hope is in and of itself pointless, but because of the soft rushing of air around him, startled by wings and putrefaction.

They murmur in hushed tones as if They think he is still asleep. He is not, he is very much awake. Both he and They know it.

What neither knows, however, is what the outcome of this will be.

He can either care and become, or he can sink back into his haze of indifference and remain.

He comes to an easy decision, but before he reveals it, he stays just a bit longer. He stays in his mind where he is free and remembering and hurting. He thinks of her and him and all that there is and all that there isn’t. He thinks of everything and nothing all at once, and then he stops because the pain is too great, and there is no pleasure in it.

Not this time.

Slowly, he opens his eyes.

At first he sees them, sharp and malevolent and disgusting. They fidget and sway and chatter, and he suppresses a shiver of horrified loathing.

At first he sees them, and then he doesn’t.

_This is good._

_This is terrible._

There is agitation, tangible and thick, and he falters as he tries to maintain a default posture. The fingers reach and the voices scold and cluck, but he ignores Them.

He sees the refrigerator, the burnt corpse of a once useful household item. Now it is just nothing.

_Same as me._

_Same as everything._

_It’s all just nothing._

He gives it a kick and a few struggling lights explode quietly into the morning dusk.

This time, however, he doesn’t think of red tail lights.

_This is good._

_This is terrible._


End file.
